


and death uncommon

by telluric_cry (perihadion)



Series: (and live by love though the stars walk backwards) [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: F/M, Holding Hands, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24278416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/telluric_cry
Summary: A chance encounter at dawn. Cloud and Aerith talk about the past, fate, and what they do and do not have a say in.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife, Mentioned Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough
Series: (and live by love though the stars walk backwards) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1752601
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53
Collections: Umbrella & Nailbat | Member Stories





	and death uncommon

Cloud awoke a little before dawn. His muscles ached a little — the battles since they had left Midgar had not been challenging but they had been ceaseless — but he knew that it would be fruitless for him to try to sleep any more. He got up, being careful not to disturb either Barret on one side or Red on the other, and pulled back the tent opening to step out.

There was a pink glow at the edge of the sky which heralded the sun’s arrival. Above it the sky was ink-dark and still scattered through with stars.

He was not alone.

Aerith was sitting alone in front of the wide expanse of sky watching the sunrise. He felt unsure about whether to approach her but she half-turned to him and he felt as if she were beckoning him over.

“Ah, talk about a coincidence,” she said brightly as he sat next to her. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

He shook his head. “How long have you been awake?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “You worried?” she said.

He looked away. It was harder to tell the truth when she was sitting next to him: flesh and blood, tangible, real. “Not really,” he said.

“Liar.”

It had bothered him at first, the way she was able to see past his words into what he really meant, how he really felt — who he really was. But in moments like this he was glad of it, glad that however badly he stumbled over what he wanted to express she knew what he meant. He wondered if she saw him like one of her flowers, if she understood that there was something he wanted to tell her but not yet, not yet — that he was trying to learn to talk to her.

They sat in silence for some time as the first rays of the dawn tinged the sky pink, yellow, blue.

“This is a special time,” Aerith said after a while. “The dawn.”

He looked sidelong at her as she looked out into the sky.

“It’s a transitional time,” she continued. “I can hear things, feel things, more clearly at these times. It’s not night and it’s not day. It’s the precipice between them where you can touch both.”

He thought of the last precipice they had stood at together at the end of the Midgar Highway and how she had grabbed his wrist, forced him to stay in that moment between past and future just a moment longer.

“You can hear the planet now?” he asked.

She nodded.

“What does it say?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t say things in words, really. It’s more like something you just feel, something you just understand.” She paused to take a deep, shuddering breath. “You know, I think I got into the habit of waking at this time because I thought maybe I would hear his voice.”

Him? Oh.

“But if you haven’t that means maybe he’s still alive, right?”

She surprised him then by giving him a small push against the shoulder. “Oh, he’s avoiding me, huh? My company is that bad?”

He caught her wrist before she could withdraw it and they were both surprised by the contact somehow. Beneath his fingers his heightened senses detected her pulse. It was racing. He let her hand fall.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” he said, looking back at the sky. It was pearlescent now, shimmering — bright. It was almost day, almost time for the others to wake. But they still had time.

“You … miss him?” he asked.

She said nothing for a while and he worried that he had said the wrong thing. But when he looked at her she opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and frowned, and he realised she was trying to find the words.

Eventually she said, “I think I miss that time. What it felt like when I was with him. He used to make me feel like I could do anything. But it — I —” she broke off. Cloud wanted to reach for her. In this moment she felt so far away.

“I think what I miss,” she said after a moment, “is not the time we spent together but all the time we didn’t. The dates we never had, the things unsaid. The goodbye we never had.” She shook her head, and then laughed a little. “The breakup we never had.”

Cloud felt something stab at his heart. What was this feeling?

Aerith placed a hand on his arm. He looked at her, and her green eyes were glowing in the morning light. “Cloud,” she said. “I realised — I think I realised that in life a lot of things feel unfinished. There are a lot of things I never got to do back then. My mother — Elmyra — it’s the same for her. There are things in life we just can’t ever know. I’m grateful to him for teaching me that.”

Cloud wished, just for a moment, that he could be someone else. That he could be someone else who could help her. That he could be someone else who knew what to do with this moment. She let her hand drop, and turned back to the sky — golden and brilliant now.

“You know,” she said. “I keep thinking about that other path. The one we took before.” She looked at Cloud and said, mockingly, “ _The Fated Path_.”

“What about it?”

She twisted her skirt between her fingers. “We defeated the Whispers. We should be able to take a new path now but —“ she paused, and Cloud felt that she was opening up some deep fear of her own. She looked at him again, “But Cloud, what if what we did then — what if we just did the only thing we could do? Because of who we are? It’s hard to see how … why we would choose to do things differently now.”

They were running out of time. The others would awaken soon.

“That’s why — that’s why I think —” she sounded desperate, “nothing has changed. We can’t fall in love. It would hurt too much when,” she paused and looked away, “you know.”

He knew.

“Why tell me this?” he said. She looked back at him, and opened her mouth as if to speak but he shook his head.

“If it’s true that we still have no say then you and I —”

He broke off and turned away from her. He felt angry at her.

“I don’t think you believe what you’re saying,” he said. “If we have no say in this, then how can we choose how to feel about each other?” He looked into his hands before saying, quietly, “We can’t. So I have to believe we can do things differently this time.”

He felt unable to look at Aerith. But she reached over and took his hand, threading her fingers through his.

He could hear the others stirring. Their time had run out.

But for now it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/618588905521987584/yepF4gaC) on tumblr.
> 
> Also, please check out [the Cloud/Aerith discord server](https://discord.gg/3PdRDER)!


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